


a bloody lord of the southern march

by elenathehun



Category: Naruto
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Pre-Canon, Women Being Awesome, alternate universe - different background
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-19
Updated: 2016-11-19
Packaged: 2018-08-31 22:34:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8596345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elenathehun/pseuds/elenathehun
Summary: Karin is an Uzumaki, and an Uzumaki is a mistress of the unexpected.





	

The burial rite is the last service Karin accepts from the remnants of Uzushio, and only because disposing of her mother’s remains would be too difficult on her own. No, better for her useless second and third cousins to take her mother’s withered husk and prepare it for cremation, better for them to scatter her ashes on the victorious sea whence they came. Karin doesn’t delude herself that they’re doing it out of love for her or her mother, any more than Karin herself performed the ceremony out of love for Rina, or Isako, or even Soseki. 

It’s just a way to say _fuck you_ to the bigger villages anyway. A pretty useless one, in Karin’s opinion. Uzumaki blood might have been prized 50 years ago when even strong shinobi were lucky to make it to forty, but these days there’s no shortage of old men and women with the might of giants in their bones. Uzumaki vitality was worth everything in the age of heroes, but this is no longer the age of heroes, but the age of _soldiers_. And as Mist showed, long before Karin was ever born, a hero can only stand for so long against an army.

The Uzumaki have no heroes left, anyway. The blood’s grown thin.

* * *

The channel is choppy as hell when they scatter Mother’s ashes. Old Narumi drones on and on and on about Mother’s great sacrifice for a renewed Uzushio; Karin focuses on the pearly clouds glowing on the horizon, instead. She’s heard the same speech so many times before, and the only thing that changes are the names of the dead. Narumi gave the exact same speech at Father’s funeral five years ago, and with that exact same expression on her face, a carefully calibrated blend of sorrow and determination. Karin’s cousins eat it up like always, but Karin’s always known they were pretty stupid, ever since they failed to learn even the _basics_ of the chains.

The ashes are thrown out into the wind. Her cousins file past and tell Karin that they hope Mother returns home. Karin just nods, tight-lipped; there’s no point in reminding them that the ashes will undoubtedly land in the channel instead.

Karin stays a little longer on the cliffside, staring down at the channel. A novice would only see the ever-churning sea, the monster that chews up ships and spits out mangled bodies; Karin sees the deliberately unstable currents, courtesy of Uzushio’s all-too-effective seal wall, and the thin path snaking it’s way through the waves. It’s the work of decades of mapping, and then years of sealing the seabed, foot by precarious foot. Her father died out there, her mother died out there, and Karin knows, sure as the sun rises, that she’ll die out there too, building a futile path back to a city destroyed when her parents were mere children.

Oh, not right away, of course: she needs to marry and bear the next generation of Uzumaki, before that happens, and she’s still a little young for that. But that’s her end, same as everyone else in this _kami_ -forsaken stretch of coast. But Karin is more an Uzumaki than anyone else in her family, with her bloody eyes and bloody hair and bloody beating heart. _The life is in the blood_ , some old sage said a long time ago, and he was more right than people know. 

In Leaf, there is a boy who doesn’t know how to give up; here in the borderlands, Karin doesn’t know how to give in. 

* * *

Not Konoha, she decides as she methodically sorts through her belongings. Uzumaki women have a tendency to enter the walls of that great city, and never leave. Not Kiri, either. _The nail that sticks out gets hammered down_ , as they say, and although the Uzumaki vitality is not quite a bloodline limit, the people of that country don’t stop and hold a debate before they lynch someone. Not Lightning, either; there’s not really any reason not to go, but like Mist, they’re still obsessed with special talents, special abilities, and they’re often not that kind about how they get them.

Karin doesn’t have much to sort through, at least in her paltry household. A single pot, to boil water and cook; a single blanket for the road; three pairs of socks and a change of clothes. No weapons, no armor - the family style never relied on either, and Karin knows that a shinobi traveling alone damn well better not look like a shinobi. No scrolls - well, not quite. What survived the flight from Uzushio is locked up tight in the Elder Narumi’s home, guarded all out of proportion to its importance. Everything truly valuable is rotting in the ruins of the Great Library. 

But every branch of the family has their book of family seals, and Karin’s is no different. Her father’s mother was a medic-nin of some middling ability; her mother’s mother was a priestess of the storms. Between them, she has a book an inch thick covering nature chakra and it’s effect on the body. Karin learned to read from this book, learned her first seals from this books, and she damn well is taking it with her, to Suna or Iwa or wherever she reaches first.

Probably Iwa, they’re closer. She’s never heard any really bad stories about them, except for the fact they’re sore losers. 

* * *

Six weeks later, she meets Orochimaru, stumbling across his base quite by accident. He’d hidden it well, but Karin is very good at finding hidden things, courtesy of years of foraging in the tide-pools at the foot of the cliffs. It’s child’s play for her to infiltrate his compound - his seals are good, but heavy-handed the way the Leaf style often is, and Karin moves through them like the wind. The old man finds her in one of his lesser labs, delicately leafing through the experimental logs.

“You know, this seal would work better if you edited the polarity of the seventh glyph and redirected its orientation to sky instead of earth,” she says to him, not even bothering to look up. It’s a good cold opening - Mother had always complimented her on that. The old man takes the bait or at least pretends to. A few back-and-forth questions, gentle probes about her expertise in nature chakra, and she’s in. He’s interested in her body, a little, but mostly in her mind. It’s flattering, as he meant it to be, but also rather reassuring. Much like beauty, blood and chakra fade, but Karin has never in her life been without her razor-sharp wits.

_A trial period, and then we’ll see,_ he says without irony. _There are places in my organization for the talented and clever._

Orochimaru lies as he breathes, but not about this. 

* * *

A year from now, Kabuto asks her if she ever worried about the consequences if she had failed that trial period.

_No,_ she responds coolly. _I knew I would meet his standards within a minute of meeting him._

Kabuto just smiles his creepy little smile at her, but Karin doesn’t take it personally. Like most of the people who flock to Orochimaru, he’s just another empty vessel frantically looking for meaning in this life. He can’t even come close to understanding someone like Karin. And anyway, she won’t have to suffer his presence much longer. The invasion is rapidly approaching, and in preparation for any blowback from the Leaf, she’s to report to the newly-built Southern Outpost, to supervise the experiments in the base proper and oversee the security of Sound’s southern border. 

Karin has to admit, “Warden of the South” has an awfully nice ring to it. 

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted on tumblr on 26 Oct 2016 for Sumigakure's Halloween Event 2016. It was a fill for prompt #2 Ruler of Hell. This was the first time I wrote Karin, and I mostly wrote it as a corrective to her throw-away canon background. Karin, like so many of the female characters in Naruto, had the capacity to be a really interesting character in her own right, as well as the potential to act as an excellent foil for Sasuke. Sadly, she got downgraded to comic relief more often than not, but she still had her moments to shine. I'm hoping this is a fitting version of 'what could have been'...


End file.
